Baerren: Trump, God’s joke on us all

President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and their son and Barron Trump, walk to Marine One across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 17, 2017, en route to Camp David in Maryland. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Five months in, and it kind of feels like god is swiftly tiring of a practical joke he played on the world by foisting Donald Trump on us all. Bored but incapable of letting it go because the point of it was to embarrass the human butts, so he keeps ramping up the absurdity. To get his point across, he’ll have to ramp up the absurdity until the obviousness of it slaps even the most obtuse among us across the face.

It took George W. Bush seven full years to reach the point where six in 10 Americans couldn’t stand him. It’s taken the orange man-baby five months. How much longer will he keep it up? You’ll have to ask God. My guess is you’ll get an answer right about the time that he steps in to prevent the next mass school shooting (thoughts and prayers!).

Political observers of all stripes were astounded this week by footage from this administration’s first cabinet meeting during which his secretaries all delivered high praise to the president upon command. Nothing like this has ever happened before was the universal response.

True, but we also never had a presidential candidate who took a victory speech as an opportunity to hawk product lines that no longer exist. Let’s also not forget that this is the same guy who publicly courted Mitt Romney, after Romney’s vigorous opposition, as a potential secretary of state and then conveniently gave the job to someone else.

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And there was self-alleged straight-talking maverick John McCain, rambling incoherently to hang a millstone of double standard around James Comey’s neck a couple of weeks ago. This is the same McCain whose years spent as a prisoner of war was mocked by Trump last year, and you would have been forgiven for expecting McCain to rise and rebuke prejudices about Italian-Americans before abruptly excusing himself from the chamber.

Who is next in this carnival of debasement? Who will next assume the position and say, “Thank you sir, may I have another” as the public at large looks on in equal parts horror and grotesque amusement.

It reminds of stories of mad kings who tortured animals while their realms fell into ruin. It’s not entirely inapt. Trump’s administration has pushed through zero major pieces of legislation, has failed to fill key diplomatic posts and can’t even give a straight answer to our closest allies to whether we’d be there if they are attacked. His guiding principle appears to be an irrational hatred for his predecessor. By no recognizable metric has this president achieved anything that you could even remotely call on-the-job competence.

This leaves as our only explanation that we’re all living some kind of practical joke, or maybe playing bit parts in a terrible modern sitcom (in our cynical age, who couldn’t see a Web comedy series where the president better resembles Zaphod Beeblebrox than Abraham Lincoln?).

We’re the joke’s butt, of course, because we elected him. Despite the fact that he is very clearly a terrible, terrible human being — a sexual predator who mocks people for their disabilities — and very clearly in all-the-way over his head, enough of us went out and cast ballots for him that he’s now president.

Tribalism and the fact that the economy hasn’t cratered (it’s time to acknowledge that presidents usually have very little direct sway over that) mean we’re never going to get to 100 percent disapproval, so the open question is when god pulls the plug on his joke. That’s a matter of speculation, but it ought to be observed that if it’s not until 2019 that a lot of us are going to be thoroughly exhausted.

Eric Baerren is a Morning Sun columnist. He can be reached at ebaerren@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ebaerren